“Conquer,” Mari repeated and pulled the blanket tighter.
“Yes, yes. Now don’t go on about the Indians and all that stuff about cruelty and arrogance; those things happen on both sides. Great change always involves great intensity. That’s just the way it is, right? Look at their desolate little towns in a completely empty landscape, and remember they lived in constant danger… They had to develop a strict, an implacable, sense of justice, they had to try to invent the Law for themselves, as best they could…” Jonna put down her cigarillo. “It doesn’t draw,” she said. “It’s the wrong kind.”
Mari remarked that perhaps the cigarillos had been lying around too long, and Jonna went on. “It must be that lawlessness has its own laws. Of course mistakes occurred. They lived such violent lives that they simply didn’t have time to reflect, that’s what I think. But mistakes happen today, too, don’t they? We hang the wrong guy, so to speak.”
Jonna leaned forward and looked at her friend earnestly. “The sense of honour,” she announced. “Believe me, the sense of honour has never been so strong. Friendship between men. You said the heroines were idiotic. Fine, they are idiotic. But take them away, forget them, and what do you find? Friendship between men who are unswervingly honourable toward one another. That’s the concept of the Western.”
“I know,” Mari said. “They have an honourable fist fight and then they’re friends for life. Unless the noblest of them gets shot at the end, sacrificing his life to soft music.”
“Now you’re just being mean,” said Jonna. She lifted aside the cloth that protected her television screen and turned to channel two.
“Anyway, I’m right,” Mari said. “It’s the same thing over and over. They ride past precisely the same mountain and the same waterfall and that Mexican church. And the saloon. And the oxcarts. Don’t they ever get tired of it?”
“No,” Jonna answered. “They never do. It’s about recognition, about recognizing what you’ve imagined. People make dreams, don’t they? The oxcarts that fight their way forward through unexplored territory, dangerous lands… Whether it’s an A-Western or a B or even a C, they feel this is the way it must have been, just like this, and it makes them proud and maybe gives them a little comfort. I think.”
“Yes,” Mari said. “Well, yes, maybe you’re right …”
But Jonna couldn’t stop. “It’s not fair of you to come and talk about repetition and the same thing over and over, and anyway your short stories are the same way, the same theme over and over again. Now close the curtains; it starts in three minutes.”
Mari dropped the blanket on the floor and announced, very slowly, “I think… now I think I’ll go to bed.”
She had a hard time falling asleep. Now they’re galloping past the red mountain. Now they’re playing poker in the saloon. Honky-tonk… They’re shooting bottles in the bar, girls are screaming. Now the stairs to the second floor are crashing down…
A trumpet blast woke her up, and she knew the movie had come to the brave men in the final fort. Maybe they’ve more or less worked things out with the Indians — everyone forgives everyone, except maybe the ones who died — and now they’re playing ‘My Darling Clementine’, which means she’s finally figured out who she loved the whole time.
And now Jonna’s turning off the television and rewinding the video. She’s brushing her teeth and coming to bed and doesn’t say a word.
Mari asked, “Was it good?”
“No. But I’m saving it anyway.”
“Still, I liked ‘My Darling Clementine’,” Mari said. “They use that same song every time, but somehow it’s right.”
Jonna got up and closed the window because the snow had begun to blow in. The room was very peaceful.
Before Mari fell asleep, she asked if they could watch this same B-Western some other evening, and Jonna said yes, she supposed they could.
In the Great City of Phoenix
AFTER A LONG BUS TRIP THROUGH ARIZONA, Jonna and Mari came late in the evening to the great city of Phoenix and checked into the first hotel they could find near the bus station.
It was called the Majestic, a heavy building from the 1910s with an air of shabby pretension. The lobby with its long mahogany counters beneath dusty potted palms, the broad staircase up to the gloom of the upper floors, the row of stiff, velvet sofas — everything was too grand, everything except the desk clerk, who was tiny under his wreath of white hair. He gave them their room key and a form to fill out and said, “The elevator closes in twenty minutes.”
The elevator operator was asleep. He was even older than the desk clerk. He pushed the button for the third floor and sat back down on his velvet chair. The elevator was a huge ornamented bronze cage and it rattled upward very slowly.
Jonna and Mari entered a static, desolate room with way too much furniture and went to bed without unpacking. But they couldn’t sleep. They relived the bus trip again and again, through shifting landscapes of desert and snowy mountains, cities without names, white salt lakes, and brief pauses in little towns they knew nothing about and to which they would never return. The trip went on and on, leaving everything behind, hour after hour, a long, long day in a silver-blue Greyhound bus.
“Are you asleep?” Jonna asked.
“No.”
“We can get our films developed here. I’ve been filming blind for a month and haven’t any idea what I’ve got.”
“Are you sure it was a good idea to shoot through the bus window? I think we were going too fast.”
“I know,” Jonna said. And, after a while, “But it was so pretty.”
They left the films to be developed, which would take a couple of days.
“Why is the city so empty?” Mari asked.
“Empty?” repeated the man behind the camera counter. “I never thought about it. But I suppose it’s because most people live outside of town and drive in to work and then back home.”
When Jonna and Mari came back to their room, they noticed a change, a small but sweeping change. It was their first encounter with the invisible chambermaid, Verity. Verity’s presence in the hotel room was powerful. It was everywhere. She had reorganized their travellers’ lives in her own way. This Verity was an obvious perfectionist and at the same time a conspicuous free spirit. She had laid out Jonna’s and Mari’s belongings symmetrically but with a certain humour; had unpacked their travel mementos and arranged them on the dresser in a caravan whose placement did not lack irony; had placed their slippers with the noses touching and spread out their nightgowns so the sleeves were holding hands. On their pillows she’d put books she’d found and liked — or perhaps disliked — using their stones from Death Valley as bookmarks. Those ugly stones must have amused her greatly. She had given the room a face.
Jonna said, “Someone’s having fun with us.”
The next evening, the mirror was decorated with their Indian souvenirs. Verity had washed and ironed everything she thought needed washing and ironing and placed it in symmetrical piles, and in the middle of the table was a large bunch of artificial flowers, which, if they remembered correctly, had previously adorned the lobby.
“I wonder,” Mari said. “I wonder if she does this in all the rooms, and is it to cheer up the hotel guests or herself? How does she have the time? Is she just teasing the other chambermaids?”
“We’ll see,” said Jonna.
They met Verity in the corridor. She was large, with red cheeks and a lot of black hair. She laughed out loud and said, “I’m Verity. Were you surprised?”
“Very much,” replied Jonna politely. “We wondered what made you so playful?”
“I thought you looked like fun,” Verity said.